1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of electronic systems for dealers to order vehicles from manufacturers.
2. Related Art
Automobile manufacturers do not generally sell directly to the public instead relying on dealerships to assume that responsibility each representing or promoting one or more specific manufacturer's brand of vehicle. And unlike other types of products which have a more limited range of models and configurations, the variety of individual vehicle models and configurations can be large and varied. Further, customer demand for a particular model, configuration or color can be as much an emotional desire as anything else. For these and other reasons, dealerships have long struggled with the ongoing question of what vehicles to order from the manufacturer in order to ensure their inventory matches customer demand while minimizing the costs of excess or slow-moving inventory which can negatively impact dealer profitability.
Traditionally, dealerships have manually determined which vehicles to order from manufacturers. Such manual processes typically lacked any analytic framework for determining what vehicles to order instead relying on the dealership's owner or manager having a sense or feel for the customer demand for particular model (sometimes referred to as intuition or “gut feel”). This was thought reasonable since such owners and managers oftentimes had previously been sales personnel believed to know what the dealership customers wanted. Despite the proliferation of computers in the modern work world, dealerships still typically operate in this fashion.
Of course, wanting to improve sales figures and revenues, some vehicle manufacturers have sought to automate the ordering process for their dealerships. However, such attempts have largely been directed to simply telling the dealership what vehicles to order with little explanation regarding why those particular recommendations are being made or providing much ability for the dealerships to modify or tailor the recommendations thus leaving dealerships in the uncomfortable position of having to either accept or deny the recommendation(s) in a sort of “take it leave it” approach. As a result, many dealerships continue to order vehicles using the old-fashioned gut feel approach.
What is needed, therefore, is a way for dealerships to be able to order vehicles from a manufacturer using an analytical framework to identify which vehicle configuration(s) to order and that still provides flexibility in the ordering process.